Lady Macbeth: The Patron Saint of Menstruation

Very little is known about the menstruation rituals of nuns. This is perhaps the biggest and bloodiest elephant in the church in existence to this day, because it predates the existence of the church itself. But all that is about to change.

The menstruation traditions of the nuns began with rejoicing about not being touched by or having to lie with men! Better to be eternally (n)unclean!

Ostensibly, if you open your Bible and visit the story of creation known as Genesis, you will probably be able to surmise with little difficulty that menstruation is the collective fall-out of The Fall. Biblically speaking, God’s punishment for the hanky panky that went on between Eve, Adam, and Serpent (the Original Sin Tree-O/Trinity of Doom) is the uterine lining on the cake of the womb. I don’t know about you, Readrrr, but I like cake. Perhaps that is why this always confuses me.

The Lord God made the perfect Garden for Adam and Eve (“a garden in the East”), where there were many trees with many fruits suitable for consumption (you think you’ve seen a pretty vineyard… Ask Eve about The Vineyards of Eden– out of this world, she’ll tell you!). In the middle of the garden were two trees: the tree of life and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Sound familiar? It should. I won’t rehash Genesis, except to point out that after she was formed out of the rib of Adam (Adam’s Rib = God’s Womb?), Eve fell into doubt, brought on by a few surreptitious word tricks. She then succumbed to the serpent and ate fruit off of the No-No Tree, as opposed to the Life Tree (rumor has it, it was a Yew), damning herself and everyone else to the brokenness of self-awareness. This caused a broken relationship between God and humanity to form, and humanity got the short end of the broken stick. From then on, the two and all generations to come were held captive to brokenness (another word for sin, which is a carry-all term for fear, shame, jealousy, rage, and everything antithetical to life). Adam was punished for listening to his counterpart, and Eve, well, I just explained why she was punished. Her punishments: severe pains in childbearing, painful labor, desire for her husband, and subservience to her husband (the egalitarian relationship of Eden was broken into a totalitarian one, in which husband rules over his wife). The logic of this confuses me to no end, but, as the nuns often remind me, I just tell myself, “Don’t question it, Sistrrr Grim.” That’s what the nuns remind me before they question me to no end about God knows what– this, that, and the other thing. My response is usually, “My dear fellow sistrrrs of The Blessed Holier Than Thou Sacrament, pay me no mind; you know I get confused sometimes. It’s that gosh darn Holy Delusion of mine!” Readrrr, I am not afraid to say it (say as many hail marys for me as you think I need but): Genesis is confusing!

What’s more confusing is how to reconcile it with our modern, scientific understanding of creation as a physiological process that involves reproductive organs. Science tells us that creation is a biological process that happens inside a woman’s body, one that is affected by external environments and circumstances. Readrrr, can you believe that? And mysticism, if we go down the green path with this, tells us to think about the syncing of menstrual cycles with the moon, which leads us into pagan, earth-mother territory. I don’t know about you, but I keep asking myself: why can’t these narratives all co-exist and form a meta-trinity of their own: in the name of The Holy Trinity, The Female Trinity, and The Triple Goddess. Why cannot these three triunes come together?

Triunes coming together…

Oh, do forgive me if you are so devout and void of doubt that my suggestion offends you; it’s just that we wayward sistrrrs hear a phrase like “The Word of God is living,” and, naturally, we want to find a way to wrap our minds around what that means– what it means for narrative constructions to actually take on lives of their own. Though I almost never agree with literal interpretations of the Bible, literalists are right when they say that we live in a “broken world.” It is a reflective one, too. Our bodies are broken in tangible ways that mirror the breaking of the bread (i.e., the body of Christ) that was given so that our sins could be forgiven. The sacrifice that leads to salvation is known as the last supper, or “love-feast.” One way of seeing a sacrifice is as something that is given up and broken in order to fulfill something or someone else’s needs. That is an act of love. When mothers choose to create babies in their bodies, they give up space in their bodies in order for their babies to grow. They become living sacrifices, broken, so that their child may live. The sacrifice of mothers who deliver babies is a reminder of, if not a reflection of, the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross. Although mothers who give birth do not always die for their babies, parts of their bodies die. Having a baby is often dangerous to the health of mothers and bodies are always altered during the process of pregnancy and childbirth. And think of Our Virgin. Mary (or Marie, “sea of bitterness,” as I prefer to call her). She gave up her body to the Holy Spirit so that the son of God could be born. And she stayed a virgin the whole time. I have NEVER met ANYONE else like that, have you? I don’t mean to insult you with my intelligence, Readrrr, but I guess that’s why they call her The Blessed Mother.

Like a virgin, touched for the very first time…

But what about women who, rather than being blessed, are cursed! I know what you’re thinking, Readrrr; you’re thinking of yourself! Exactly. What about the rest of us? The cursed. What about the cursed?! I have been trying to find some answers about what it means for an entire species to be cursed. The high horse nuns don’t seem to want to give anything away, so I have had to rely on my spy gear to get to the bottom of this.

A curse, or more aptly put: a malediction, is a magical word or magical words intended to bring about evil or destruction. Oh, so that’s what Sistrrr Zora was doing when she was whispering “holy death upon him, holy death upon him” into her collar while folding her hands in prayer and staring down Father Donner during before-dinner prayers the other night! (Hello! Epiphany! Doh!) A malediction. That sounds like a male-addiction, which is kind of ironic because never has a nun EVER had an addiction to a male! A mail-addiction, on the other hand– every nun has one (and you’re talkin’ to The Apostolic Postmistress).

I tease you, Readrrr. You and I both know I know all about curses. In my wing of the convent, we call them hexes. If you want to know how to put a hex on someone, just ask me; I do it seventeen hundred times a day. But I digress. The real matter at hand, here, is that, while Our Blessed Mother has the honor of being blessed; we have the dishonor of being HEXED. Collectively hexed. When you think about it that way, it really doesn’t sound so bad. As a Hexologist and the founder of Hexuality Theory, I can tell you: being HEXED ain’t always a bad thing. There are Hexes of Salvation and Hexes of Destruction. If you ever want to partake in the fruit of the Hextree of Hexknowledge of Good and Evil, I’m the serpent for Yew, but while you wait like Little Miss Muffet on your tuffet for me to offer you the pectin love-fe(a)st that will “reverse the curse”, so to speak, let us consider in a deeper way the trinitarian meta-discourse of Our Lady. Not Our Blessed Lady. Our Hexed Lady.

Her name is Macbeth.

You might know this lady as the lady who, in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, placed a hex on herself when she famously bid her ghostly sistrrrs:

“Come, you spirits / That tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.”

Why would a lady do such a thing? Why would she unsex herself? Readrrr, many before you have asked this question. I have found the answer, after much deliberation, and it is simple. She did what every nun wishes she could do: she unsexed herself. And she did it so that she could get a taste of the early egalitarianism of Eden.

Sure, Lady Macbeth, in the context of the play, wanted to possess the qualities that were not traditionally associated with her sex so that she could follow her ambitions and climb to the top, with her husband. She wanted to be ONE with Macbeth, and who can blame her– the Bible makes it clear that God intended for husband and wife to become one flesh (if you want the passage, back to Genesis you go). Lady Macbeth was calling on the holy spirits to have mercy on her mortality and to make her something holy, to make her one with her husband. Immortality via marital oneness!

What does it mean to become one flesh? It means to return to a state of no longer being broken. It means to go back to that Garden of The East and to eat the fruit from The Tree of Life (the Yew, the One and Only, on which hang The Whole Fruit) instead of The Tree of Binary (i.e., The Tree on which hang The Fruit Divided, and dividedness itself, in which two cannot become one and must always be two). You might even call Lady Macbeth a religious zealot in favor of extreme, radical monogamy. Though there is no mention of Adam and Eve in the text, there are Biblical references galore (and gall gore). Though the murderousness of The Macbeths is not to be dismissed, maybe we’ve been missing the big picture all along. Perhaps blood is a metaphor for life, for creation, for birth, in which case, it is not a sign of evil and sin but, rather, a symbol of holy sacrifice and the unity of the spirit (of husband and wife, as one).

Lady Macbeth = Macbeth (it’s Shakespearean Gendrrr Math)

Now you might be wondering why a probationary nun like me, a nun of Sapphic inclinations, would want to promote the idea of oneness between husband and wife. It would surprise me if you were not wondering this. But, Readrrr, it is all perfectly sensible. Lady Macbeth UNSEXES herself. This means she becomes neither husband nor wife, and in doing so, she allows herself to be simply Macbeth. If anything, she becomes both husband and wife. And why does it matter? It matters because the nuns are NUNSEXED– they are wives of the church, nunsexed to being one with the church. The nuns, therefore, are the church. The Vat will never stand for this to be acknowledged, but it is the priest and his supremacy over the nun that keeps the holy union between church and nun from being fully realized. (Get out of the way, Man!)

The Blessed Mother and The Hex’ed Mother have something in common: They are both virgins. One, literally, and the other, via narrative construction. The Hex’ed Mother, Our Lady of Perpetual Macbeth’ed’ness, is the metaphor for a spiritual return to oneness with God and The Garden. It only makes sense for what is (n)unnatural to produce what is supernatural. This is high theory, indeed, Readrrr, so let me put it in low terms for you, in case you are feeling haunted by the ecclesiastic dauntingness of it all.

What we need to discuss is why the nuns are the reverse of The Virgin Mother. This will explain why the nuns are like Lady Macbeth.

The nuns are reverse Blessed Mothers because, unlike The Virgin who never had sex but gave birth to a baby, the nuns have sex but never give birth. Oh, readrrr! Do be calm! I know I have (n)unloaded a bigtime bombshell in putting this in writing and that The Vat will be on my ass as soon as I publish this, but, I am sorry, I just cannot allow life on earth to continue without this fact being known. The nuns have sex.

When your heart starts functioning again, come back to me, Readrrr. I want to explain how it works. I cannot divulge everything, so you’re going to have to use your imagination, like every good readrrr should. But you’re not just a good readrrr, Readrrr; you’re the best readrrr, so use your imagination like a pro, like a Tim Burton or a Willy Wonka. Are you with me in the world of Pure Imagination, Readrrr? All right. Then we shall proceed.

First, know that there are nuns who do not have sex. They are asexual nuns (as opposed to haysexual nuns and naysexual nuns). There are a good number of asexual nuns around, but not all nuns are asexual. There are one or two aromantic nuns around, too, but most of the nuns are romantically inclined, even if they are not sexually inclined. One of the biggest misconceptions about the nuns is that they are not sexual beings. Many are! Many are sexual fiends, in fact. Which leads us back to Our Lady Macbeth.

The nuns are presumably virgins when they enter the gates of the convent, so technically they should not have had sex prior to being here. Their virginity while in the convent is another matter entirely. While the church aims to be perfect, it is anything but. The church is broken, the nuns are broken, everyone is broken. You understand.

So onto the matter of how nuns lose their virginity in the convent.

Each nun, when she enters the sistrrrhood, is given a copy of Macbeth and two wands to go with it. Sistrrr Smyth, abbey wand-maker hextraordinaire, builds these 100% supernatural wands for the nuns (it’s part of her business, The Wand Cellar, which runs out of Wand World). Each wand is one-of-a-kind, hand-made by a nun for a nun, according to the incoming nun’s preferences. All the nuns believe that, while nuns may not need a room nun’s own, every nun needs a wand of nun’s own. What the nun does with her wand after it is placed in her hand is entirely up to her. She can share it with whomever she pleases.

So back to Wand Delivery Protocol. A top secret survey is given to each sistrrr weeks in advance of arrival. Upon arrival, each nun is handed a Bible, a copy of Macbeth, and two wands tied together in the shape of our Good Lord’s cross. Each nun decides, with the help of Her Holy Fathrrr, when it is time to untie the cross and release the bonds, so to speak, so that the wands may fulfill their divine purpose. I have never known a nun to untie her wands alone, usually they do it in twos; but I have known a lovely asexual nun named Sistrrr Mildred (everybody dreaded her but admired her love of reading), who used hers to knit rainbow panties and matching quilts for her less-handy sistrrrs. She was not aromantic, either; she had a very intense romance with books, cakes, and other nuns.

On the other end of the spectrum are the nuns who are both sexual and romantic. Like me. How do they defeat the curse of virginity while still remaining virgins? They use their wands. Virginity is a special kind of magic. It’s not always easy to practice it. That’s why Sistrrr Asana, who is a health coach at the abbey where I currently reside, runs a workshop called “Lady Macbeth in the 21st Century for Wand-loving Nuns as Old as Moses.” It’s a sixteen year course on becoming a weird sistrrr through the use of a wand. The nuns spend the first ten years of the course studying Macbeth Theory and the last six mastering the art of weird sistrrrhood (i.e., the fellowship of the wand). Only sexually active nuns are permitted into the final six year portion of Sistrrr Asana’s course. Every class period begins with stretching and obscene yoga poses named after scenes, lines, and characters from The Scottish Play; and every class ends with a performance. Mastery of the wand is the goal, although I have witnessed some major catastrophes. Like the time Sistrrr Quinn tried to use a wand on Sistrrr Gin, who is in love with Sistrrr Shynn, and all three of them ended up in the hospital, needing not just a nurse but also a hearse (for Sistrrr Quinn, who committed suicide-by-wand when Sistrrr Shynn put a hex on Sistrrr Gin’s Wand Receptacle so that Sistrrr Quinn’s wand would never enter it). Sistrrr Asan-ahhhh was protected from prosecution because every nun signs a waiver when she enters the class, claiming responsibility for any misuses of the wand. We were all surprised to see Sistrrr Quinn back in class the next week, however. Apparently she had faked her own suicide. Well, she was kicked out of class, thank God, and her wand was taken away, but I now fear for the safety of Sistrrr Shynn and Sistrrr Gin because you just never know about that Sistrrr Quinn, Medicine Wo/man that she is. It’s a good thing she’s not a doctor! Anyway…

(Sometimes a sistrrr loses her virginity because she is raped by a priest but most of the time, she loses it, at home, in her room, while the priest is out, lounging around in his twenty-thousand dollar office, shoving a few congregation-made pecan pie slices in his face.)

Sistrrrs do fall in love. Sistrrrs do have desires. And Sistrrrs do practice safe sex. The safest imaginable. Particularly because the nuns are the most monogamous creatures on the face of earth. While most ordinary women are serial monogamists, the nuns are serious monogamists– when they mate with another nun, they mate for life, death, and resurrection.

Sistrrr Desire (aka Lady Macbeth). Queen of Monogamy.

But they do not bear children. Therefore, they do not need birth control. Their wombs are neither barren nor fruitful. Their wombs are neutral. Like their patron saint, Lady Macbeth, who never bore broken fruit, and was by virtue of her own command, (n)unsexed. But that doesn’t mean she never mothered anything (Enter: The Weird Sistrrrs). Like Adrienne Rich reminds us, in Of Woman Born, “the mother is there, it seems, for better or worse, in childless women as well; the mother looms…” Lady Macbeth looms. The witches loom. The nuns loom. You loom. I loom. We loom. That is to say, we are brewing, our chosen word for “giving birth and mothering in nun-traditional ways.” To be a “brewster,” according to Mary Daly, in her Wickedary, is to be one who brews, or one who elicits “(something troublesome or woeful) as if by brewing magical potions of spells (brewing mischief).” She further defines a BREWSTER as a Witch who “Brews Archimagical potions and Spells, stirring up trouble for the tricksters and torturers of women.”

Readrrr, ever heard of The Women of Brewster Place? Sistrrr Gloria Naylor knew what every nun knows: that the nuns are THE Women of Brewster Place, and that there’s no denying it! Lady Macbeth is most certainly a brewster. She and Macbeth, as one entity, form one mighty, mighty brewster.

The Nuns of Brewster Place love to read the Daly Wickedary!

I celebrate Our Lady Macbeth with the nuns because, to me, Lady Macbeth is a nun. We have much love for Our Lady. When Sistrrr Grin (Grindykowalski) was here, before she and I became one nundroid, she named one of her wands ‘Lady’ and I named one of my wands ‘Macbeth’, and, when we would practice magic together, Lady and Macbeth would become nun. And we would become one. But I can’t think too much about that great mystery or I will miss my calling in this post, which is to tell you about the significance of Lady Macbeth at the convent.

Sistrrr Lady Lily Macbeth

Sistrrr Lady Vivien Macbeth

In order for this prof-essy to be fulfilled, we must together go to our final destination, down the green path. The path of Pa-ganism. Which, as it turns out, is the Bram Stoker-ian primrose path where scarlet letters on the evils of drinking (blood) reign sup-reme. This is what we, at the coven (ahem: convent), call The Lady Macbeth Path.

The formula is simple. Take a bunch of nuns, put ’em in a(n) (c)oven, and what do ya get?

Okay, lame-man’s terms.

Cat-e-gory: Place

The living quarters in which female individuals who are not and never will be on birth control reside.

What is: a convent.

Yes, Readrrr. Now you understand more keenly the Lady Macbeth – Nun Connection. The nuns bleed. They bleed a lot, and they bleed heavily. And they bleed abnormally.

In a typical household, where there are, oh, say maybe four menstrual cycling ladies (at most) in close proximity; the cycles of the ladies will often synchronize so that they bleed in chorus. At the abbey, where there are hundreds of nuns living in quarters the size of a thimble, something menstrually extraordinary happens. Hundreds of nuns menstruate together, often twice a month. Yes, you heard me. Are you using that imagination of yours, Readrrr, to picture what this is like– what it is like to have hoards of women in close quarters menstruating together? It’s total may-hem. To handle this, the nuns are divided into Menstrual Teams, and they spend their days confined to little red nun tents. The Vat does not allow the nuns to use tampons,but the nuns aren’t too distressed about it because they have long felt uneasy about the effect of tampons on the environment. Plus, they are aware that there are better things to do with the outward manifestations of one’s sacred flow.

It was a little-known nun, Sistrrr Leona Chalmers, in fact, who was the first to invent the menstrual cup. Sistrrr Leona was an actress who wrote a book called The Intimate Side of a [Nun’s] Life, or something like that. Sistrrrs of the Excessive Flow from all over the globe are grateful to her for her invention.

A problem as old as Eve!

The Chalice

Because The Vat won’t put a dime toward female hygiene, the nuns have had to rely on the work of probationary nuns like me to get menstrual cups into their abbeys. Just last week, I smuggled sixteen Diva Cups into Mother of Divine Sorrows, a nearby abbey. I doled out the cups to sixteen very grateful nuns-in-need. I taught them all I know about diva cup insertion (Readrrr, ever wonder what it’s like to possess a chalice inside of you?) and I stayed with them until they were all Diva Cup pros. I told them that what they do with the cups, once they are full, is up to them. They vowed never to speak of it, which just figures, but I know from personal experience that the nuns read Bram Stoker’s Dracula during their days in the red tents.

As you now know, the nuns take menstruating with sistrrrs to the extreme. There are no words in the English, or any other, language that can describe what it is like when nuns menstruate. Because of this, I recommended that the nuns personify their collective cycle and give her a divine name. And so, when the nuns bleed, it is universally acknowledged that LADY MACBETH (Queen of the Diva Cup!) is visiting the convent. When she comes, we bleed. When we bleed, she comes. All sorts of horror stories, full of blood and gore, are told about the visits Lady Macbeth makes to the convent, but unlike Bloody Mary, whom the nuns abhor, Lady Macbeth is a welcome visitor! When Lady Macbeth comes, the nuns are under HER battlements. The nuns LOVE when she comes; the nuns love being under her battlements. “Come thick night,” they cry, as they await her arrival. She’s bloody and when she comes the entire abbey goes from White House to Crimson House, including the wimples and collars, and anything that is typically white. The nuns embrace the red when Lady Macbeth comes to town, and they welcome her with open… arms, legs, mouths, and whatever else they can open. Lady Macbeth is the Patron Saint of Menstruation.

Sistrrr Lady Vivien Macbeth

Lady Macbeth is, therefore, a symbol of sistrrrhood, of fellowship, and of unity. No sistrrr shall bleed alone; no sistrrr shall bleed lonely! When sistrrrs cramp, they cramp together. When sistrrrs are moody, they are moody together. When sistrrrs sleep abnormally, they sleep abnormally together. When sistrrrs breasts ache; they ache together. When sistrrrs spill blood on the carpet and on the tablecloth, they spill together. And when Lady Macbeth ends her stay at the convent, the sistrrrs clean together. Never is an ill word spoken about Lady Macbeth, no matter how big the damn spot the nuns cannot get out. The nuns know the truth: Lady Macbeth is all the purr-fumes of Arabia; when she lays her little hand upon the abbey, the nuns know they are in for the sweet treat of sistrrrhood and togetherness.

I have known many-a-nun to turn her habit into a Dracula costume when Lady Macbeth is in town, and for some reason they always line up in droves at my door (fancy that), but when Lady Macbeth is in town, I always hunker down with the guest of honor (L+M) and my cellmate. We turn our room into a brew-rrry and we use our wands and Lady Macbeth’s charm-ing purr-sonality to conjure potions and spirits. It’s a grand time. The nuns take turns pressing their ears against our door, just to catch a whiff, a sniff, a yip, or a nip. I love all the nuns, but when I want to be alone with someone for a Lady Macbeth Party, I am very protective of our privacy. The nuns have sex lives, but only one (probationary) nun has a hex life, and it must be protected at all costs. Lady Macbeth loves all the nuns, too, but she only wants to share a bed with me and my broommate. Do we put up with lots of howling outside our red tent door? Of course. But we’re mostly preoccupied by the howling inside.

My Sistrrr Someone and I take turns howling the following Lady Macbethisms:

Howling is appropriate during menstruation, as the word “menstruation” itself is etymologically linked to the moon (“menses”), reflecting our earliest conceptions of menstruation as a lunar phenomenon, mirroring the lunar calendar and, as such, ebbing and flowing according to the tides. The relationship is no longer validated by the popular majority; however, there are still witches, like me, who operate according to lunar logic, and who menstruate according to the same logic. We are the Interstellar Sapphos of the Post Lewis Carroll-ian Generation. We study our cycles in the House of Hecate, the Triune Goddess of the Moon, which brings me back to what I mentioned earlier about the mirroring of trinities across the ages.

I will say a word on Hecate. Sistrrr Shakespeare once named herself Athena when we were having Greek Week at the Friary Priory (I’ll save that for another post), but not too long after Greek Week, she decided to change her name from Athena to Hecate because her friend, Sistrrr Mona, copied her by trying to be the Roman equivalent of Athena (that would be Minerva— the nerve, ah!). It was then that I was first introduced to Hecate who, like Sistrrr Shakespeare, engaged in a tradition of howling at the moon as per her lunar cycle would dictate. Hecate, in Greek, means “will.” She is often depicted in statues and art as being triune: or, as being one in three. Hecate makes a Homeric appearance, as well. The phrase that sticks most with me when I think of my Homer-erotic nature is this line: “Hecate, with a torch in her hands,” from the Homeric Hymn (2) to Demeter. Hecate is often depicted holding torches. Hecate is associated with death, light, witchcraft, and magic; but as the bringer of torchlight, her ability to hold fire in her hands sets her apart from death, as well. With a torch in each hand, and three pairs of hands, she is, to me, The Goddess of Six Flames, which is hexologically significant.

I am partial to Marguerite Johnson’s characterization of her as a liminal goddess, or a “deity of liminal zones.” There is not only an all-female parallel to the Christian trinity encapsulated in Hecate; there is also a parallel with Lady Macbeth. A case may be made, though I haven’t exactly made it in scholarly form yet, that Hecate and Lady Macbeth are one and the same.

It is obvious that the three witches in the play are the three embodiments of Hecate but it is less obvious that Hecate might represent the oneness of the Macbeths. One of my favorite portraits of Lady Macbeth is Johann Heinrich Füssli’s “The Sleepwalking Lady Macbeth” (included bel0w). Lady Macbeth will always be the “old flame” of the nuns. The Pagan worship of The Triple Goddess lends more credence to these connections. The origins of The Maiden-Mother-Crone Goddess of neopaganism is, again, connected to the moon.

The Sleepwalking Lady Macbeth

Day or night, dark or light, the nuns honor the trinity, in all of its forms. When they are down on their knees, they make the sign of the cross, and they say:

In nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus Sancti.

(Latin, for “In the name of the Fathrrr, and the Son, and the Holy Spirrrit.”)

This is known as the trinitarian formula. The three are separate from one another, like the weird sistrrrs in Macbeth, but they are connected in that they are all God. Does that make Hecate a god figure in Macbeth? Why, indeed, yes. So where does that leave Lady Macbeth?

In bed with me, right now. Tell you more about it when it’s not an ungodly hour and when I’m not in the presence of The Ho-le.e. Ghost.

I speak on behalf of Lady Macbeth, Sistrrr Shakespeare, and myself when I concur with Sarah Coakley’s reminder that we are ever “on the brink” and “fumbling toward” an “elusive goal of inner trinitarian radical equality.” But for doubters of my sincerity, I will point out that even Jean Bolin had the sense to acknowledge that “all kinds of wickedness must be presumed normal with witches, in one who is a witch.” The wicked lens is the wicked lens. If you can’t see through it, you’re not a witch. If you can, then better get thee to a nunnery fast (and when you do, call forth the spirits of the puns to punsex you, at once!).

And the next time someone tells you to act like a lady, do what they tell you– act like a Lady Macbeth!